Land Use and Soil Erosion in Prehistoric and Historical Greece

A reexamination of human-induced environmental change within the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico

“…This study demonstrates that, similar to those in other societies (39,60,62,65,66), the prehistoric inhabitants of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin were able to maintain environmental stability for centuries, but at the same time created a landscape susceptible to unforeseen risk, in this instance population collapse. This long-term stability demonstrates that the use of indigenous landscape practices may be appropriate for modern conservation (67-71) but only if (39) care is taken to resolve the causes and practices that led to past failures (31).…”

“…There, the expulsion of the Moors resulted in the abandonment of associated intensive landscape systems (3,63). Similar patterns of degradation caused by catastrophic labor lost to disease have been documented for other parts of Europe as well (3,60). Like the Aztecs (64) and the Classic period Maya (1), Pátzcuaro land managers were forced to moderate past environmental damage, but in doing so they created an environment increasingly susceptible to risk.…”

“…First, population centers, not agriculture, initiated land degradation within the study region. This is similar to other prehistoric societies (1,(60)(61)(62) and further falsifies the ''pristine myth'' of prehistoric indigenous American landscapes (22,24,27), but with the following caveat: early degradation was settlement-wide, not landscape-wide, a pattern that persisted throughout the Prehispanic period. This suggests human, rather than climatic (or other), causation.…”

The Impact of Rapid Climate Change on Prehistoric Societies during the Holocene in the Eastern Mediterranean

“…Due to extensive archaeological surveys (Gallis 1992; and geomorphologic studies (e.g. van Andel et al 1990;van Andel and Runnels 1995;van Andel 1995), as well as diachronic analysis of prehistoric settlement patterns (e.g. Halstead, Perlès 2001;Johnson and Perlès 2004), the fertile palaeo-floodplains of eastern Thessaly (Larissa plain) present one of the most extensively surveyed and best-studied archaeological regions in Greece.…”

Soil erosion and agricultural sustainability

“…In recent decades, archaeological studies confirmed pronounced episodes of soil erosion associated with the rise and subsequent decline of civilizations in the Middle East, Greece, Rome, and Mesoamerica, as well as other regions around the globe (4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Most commentators, however, generally attribute such erosional episodes to the effects of deforestation (9)(10)(11)(12) and neglect the role of agriculture in maintaining accelerated erosion in upland environments.…”